Extemporaneous musings, occasionally poetic, about life in its richly varied dimensions, especially as relates to history, theology, law, literature, science, by one who is an attorney, ordained minister, historian, writer, and African American.
Friday, January 30, 2015
HALT! WHO GOES THERE?
HALT! WHO GOES THERE?
Appearances are often deceptive. Fools' gold looks like real gold. Fake diamonds, purses, luggage, shoes, wheat, sugar, coffee, watches, hair, features, and people are all common.
In this very intensely race-conscious society with its deeply racist history, snap judgments are often made just on racial appearances, to the hurt of the deceived. Exploiters exploit race on either side of the color division: "white" versus whomever or reverse!
While it may be more burdensome to do, it is usually more prudent to also require proof of fealty, of allegiance, by some simple means, rather than to rely simply on facile or facial similarities or appearances. The password "shibboleth" was required in the Bible as a test. Similar passwords were required by military sentinels whose universal command is "Halt! Who goes there?"
In this age of deceptions involving cyber-hacking, photoshopping, tricks, pretentiousness and illusions, prima facie appearances alone will not do, any more. One must show cause by one's conduct or else! Demand more, command more; remain vigilant. And, oh yes, change your old passwords!
Judges 12 explains "Shibboleth":
…5The Gileadites captured the fords of the Jordan opposite Ephraim. And it happened when any of the fugitives of Ephraim said, "Let me cross over," the men of Gilead would say to him, "Are you an Ephraimite?" If he said, "No," 6then they would say to him, "Say now, 'Shibboleth.'" But he said, "Sibboleth," for he could not pronounce it correctly. Then they seized him and slew him at the fords of the Jordan. Thus there fell at that time 42,000 of Ephraim. 7Jephthah judged Israel six years. Then Jephthah the Gileadite died and was buried in one of the cities of Gilead.
Thursday, January 29, 2015
WAS EUCLID AN AFRICAN?
Euclid - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Was Euclid an African" is a question about which I have long marveled, notwithstanding popular characterizations of him as being Greek.
Looking him up, my conviction that he was African and was not Greek, is strengthened by the fact that little is known about him, despite his living around 350 BC. Other "Greeks" of that era, and earlier, of lesser stature, are well known! It seems that Proclus, who wrote a commentary on Euclid's Elements, and his credited with scribing the best information about him--fragmentary though it is--lived around 450 AD, 800 years after Euclid!
The purported original copy of "Euclid's Elements"--the most important book in Western civilization next to the Bible-- is in the Vatican and mentions no author at all!
The mathematical principles elucidated by Euclid were applied in Egypt and Nubia thousands of years before there was a Greece, much less a Euclid; well before 300 BC in their pyramids, temples, and megaliths.
Other scholars also contend that Euclid did not exist at all, being an avatar in effect. No sculpture of Euclid is authentic, therefore, being imagined.
The identity of Euclid is important because many black heroes and personages were painted "white" by supremacists to justify black subjugation and to repress black self-determination. I could name some but won't.
Read this article and ask yourself was Euclid African? I say that he was; and that Euclid represents a guild of African savants spanning eons that gave mankind geometry, fractions and mathematics 10,000 years ago, at least as Plato, a Greek, has written in THE LAWS and in TIMAEUS.
Yet, many would claim that Euclid was taught by Plato's pupils! Absurd.
Euclid - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Euclid (/ˈjuːklɪd/; Greek: Εὐκλείδης Eukleidēs; fl. 300 BC), sometimes called Euclid of Alexandria to distinguish him from Euclid of Megara, was a Greek mathematician, often referred to as the "Father of Geometry". He was active in Alexandria during the reign of Ptolemy I (323–283 BC). His Elements…
EN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG
THE STARS HAVE GIVEN US ALL
THE STARS HAVE GIVEN US ALL
Reading and recording the stars on their annual circuits, as they coursed through the night sky, from fixed reference points, and relative to such points, enabled early men to mark and to demarcate the earth, in relation to those stars' perennial and unerring rhythms and risings, over thousands and thousands of years of observing.
These men equated the flooding of their blessed river, the sacred Mother Nile, whose beneficent, nutrient-rich, effluvia, and whose inundating waters, annually, faithfully overspread their dry, thirsty land with inner Africa's life-giving, black muds.
Thus, they called their country by the eponym, "Kemet," meaning the black land, whose metonymic nomenclature described the land and its people. The Greeks, their very latter-day students, whose knowledge they regarded as akin to that of "children" says Plato, who had flocked to Kemet to learn, called this land, " Egypt, " their transliteration for its true given name, "Hwt-ka-Ptah" by its indigenous people.
Still, the stars, whom they named and revered as their gods, enabled them to define, to refine, and to delineate the notion of "time;" their lands, the skies and the seas by use of their marvelous fractions and geometry; in Greek, "earth measures" . These ritualized mathematical applications gave civilization : the calendar, surveying, navigation, architecture, engineering, astronomy, astrology, agriculture, music, medicine, writing, education, religion. Systematic priestly applications of plane and solid geometry and mathematics afforded by the stars to the daily lives of mankind, regularly and rigorously are recorded in stone megaliths that yet awe modern man.
Wednesday, January 28, 2015
SOLVING RACIAL CONFOUNDMENT IN AMERICA
Working-class neighborhoods of black families that are homeowners, which are anchored by strong neighborhood schools would solve so many social, political, and economic difficulties that confound us. This is not mere speculation. I was blessed to grow up in one such like it in Rockhill, Missouri, Webster Groves School District, 1963-1969.
Monday, January 26, 2015
BLACKS PEOPLED THE AMERICAS BEFORE COLUMBUS
Sunday, January 25, 2015
BETRAYAL'S NADIR
Image from http://s2.quickmeme.com/…/f03c65dedb31f82e1a038c79f66aa478b….
The caption says: "I passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866," under the picture of Rutherford B. Hayes, a future President. That Act gave the freedmen the same rights as white persons to sue and be sued; to hold property, and to testify in court. Sadly, Hayes' election against Tilden in 1876, resulted in the infamous compromise over the election's controversy, with Hayes carrying the electoral vote and Samuel B. Tilden the popular vote. As a result, Hayes and the Republicans jettisoned the blacks and their "rights" to the South, in exchange for the White House, and non-enforcement of civil rights laws. The ensuing decades of oppression and peonage brought on by that betrayal is known as our "nadir."
Saturday, January 24, 2015
NETANYAHU'S NERVY GOP-ADDRESS TO CONGRESS
NETANYAHU'S NERVY GOP-ADDRESS TO CONGRESS
That furtive filigree disguising the true nature and extent of the annual cycle of American financing for the 1947-British and American-created State of Israel, out of the former lowly State of Palestine, for the horrors of Hitler's Nazi Germany in WWII, which federal funding is certain to be revealed, unfurled, at least in part, incident to the run-up to Israel's Netanyahu 's unprecedented address to Congress in March 2015, at the patently political invitation of Speaker John Boehner of Ohio. An apparent intent of such an address can surely be to thwart the consummation of a nuclear arms treaty between the nation of Iran and the United States, and European allies, now being secretly negotiated, in order to mollify, and to placate Israel, and its formidable backers, which "feel threatened" by a potential nuclear Iran, and would prefer to bomb its inchoate "nuclear capability," with US aid, collaboration and assistance, out of existence!
Thursday, January 22, 2015
LIFE AND DEATH OPTIONS
Life and death options"
The terminus of life is death. We all go. No exceptions, no recourse.
Choices are personal and cultural respecting whether to live or die.
Death we know not. Life we know.
Whether it is better to stay or to go?
To forfeit this, for that we don't know.
Most people leave here involuntarily
No need to hurry death unnecessarily
Some choose to take their own lives
In varying forms of suicide.
Is life a fickle miracle or a divine gift?
That judgment each one must make.
Is living now a prior choice applied; or
A consequence of cosmic suicide?
Its tenuousness cannot be denied!
Harakiri to some is an honored ritual
To others, it's a horror and disgrace
Either way, inevitability runs its race.
If we had no choice in coming here
Whence comes our choice to die?
Chance, choice, ordained, or all one:
what purpose is served to live or die?
Only Creator/God truly knows why!
Whether good, bad or in between,
All destiny is known;
all that exists in space/time
must soon go back home!
Tuesday, January 20, 2015
irrefutable
FIGS' APPLICABILTY
10 Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be . 11 Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter? 12 Can the fig tree, my brethren, bear olive berries? either a vine, figs? so can no fountain both yield salt water and fresh. James 3:
APPLICATION:
COURTS OF JUSTICE MUST NOT BE UNJUST. GOVERNMENTS OF, BY, AND FOR, THE PEOPLE, SHOULD NOT FAVOR SOME, AND NOT OTHERS. CHURCHES SHOULD DISSEMINATE IN CHARITY AS MUCH AS THEY DISTRIBUTE IN SALARIES, WAGES, BONUSES AND BENEFITS; SCHOOLS SHOULD EDUCATE, NOT MIS-EDUCATE. LET LOVE ABIDE.
Monday, January 19, 2015
BROKE AND POOR
BROKE AND POOR
THE GULF BETWEEN BEING 'BROKE" AND BEING "POOR" IS VERY VAST.
EVERYONE, GOVERNMENTS, BANKS, AND CORPORATIONS, CAN BE OR HAVE BEEN "BROKE," A TEMPORARY MATERIAL DEFICIT THAT IS CURABLE.
BEING POOR IS A PERMANENT SPIRITUAL DEFICIT, THAT IS INCURABLE, ABSENT THE INTERCESSION OF THE HOLY SPIRIT TO RESTORE THE SOUL.
I HAVE BEEN 'BROKE' MANY TIMES, EVEN NOW, BUT NEVER 'POOR', PRAISE BE TO GOD, AND THANK YOU JESUS!
GEORGE SOROS' MONEY
Image from http://patdollard.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/George-Soros-Chasmic.jpg.
GEORGE SOROS' MONEY
I was happy to read that George Soros, billionaire, had spent thirty-three million dollars on the Ferguson movement . Movements roll on money, just like "an army marches on its stomach!" according to Napoleon.
I say this for the benefit of the gullible, naive, historically ingenuous among us, who think that movements are fueled by fury and passion.
Wrong! The American Revolution had a prime financial backer, another billionaire for his day, named Robert Morris.
One of the great challenges of the Civil Rights Movement was funding, as various groups competed for funding. When it dried up, after the apotheosis of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1968, so did the movement ! That is history. Deal with it!
The Koch Brothers billions' continually back favored conservative candidates and causes, through fronts and foundations . We would do well to do likewise or lose!
Booker T. Washington's innumerable contributions to our causes, culture, and "uplift" were all supported by his genius and example; and by rich owners of railroads, and industry! Him we, the so-called "educated elite" ignorantly criticized for not being a leftist like Marx or Lenin, who, ironically, had their own rich backers!
Critics are our shadows, lacking substance , but stirring fear and dread from the light's reflection off what is real. By their works, or their lack, will you know them.
Thank you, Mr. Soros! Beat the bushes and find some billionaires near you, who can help fund the final leg of our long-laboring revolution, wherever that may be !
Sunday, January 18, 2015
THE ONE-DROP RULE PRAISES
"THE ONE-DROP RULE" PRAISES
I praise God for the American "one-drop rule!" By reason of it, any discernible trace of Negro blood, however remote, made one a Negro; even as diluted as 1/8, as infamously was the case with Homer Plessy, in the 1896 decision Plessy v. Ferguson.
In other countries like Brazil, Haiti, Cuba, and many black-enslaved or neocolonial possessions, including Liberia, one found a plethora of legal and entitlements based on skin-color or hair texture or both. Not so, in America, thanks to the one-drop rule.
Whatever one's phenotype, the one-drop rule garnered us all under one Negro banner: from Satchmo to Cab Calloway; Lena Horne to Pearl Bailey. One banner, one blood, one destiny!
All praises are due to the "One-drop Rule" for our sense of fellowship, sense of kin, community, and hope. Moreover to it, our truly unparalleled progress as a new people is due!
They meant it for evil, but God meant it for good! One drop: a lil' dab'll do ya!
One-drop rule - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The one-drop rule is a sociological and legal principle of racial classification that was historically prominent in the United States asserting that any person with even one ancestor of sub-Saharan-African ancestry ("one...
EN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG
Thursday, January 15, 2015
WHY POOR WHITES VOTE AGAINST THEIR OWN ECONOMIC INTERESTS
WHY POOR WHITES VOTE AGAINST THEIR OWN ECONOMIC INTERESTS
It is really amazing, and more than a little pathetic, that tens of millions of "poor white" folks continually vote contrary to their own vested economic interests, in state, local, and federal elections. Apparently they think that their "whiteness," will save them from poverty, pain, depravity.
Such persons are at the "base" of the Southern strategy dating back to the colonial era, when the elite separated their indentured servants, who were black, white, and indigenes, by law, into classes to thwart their conspiring together to overthrow their elitist political, economic, cultural overlords.
The blacks became slaves for life, exceptions notwithstanding. The poor whites were elevated politically, economically, culturally, above the blacks, being given small plots of land, seeds, tools, cash, and jobs, overseeing the blacks, and the right to vote. The Indigenes were removed farther and farther west, or liquidated.
This division of labor and its legal entitlements worked well for the colonial elite, until it was twice shaken: first, by the 1777-80s American Rebellion, and second, by the War of 1812. In each war, the British offered freedom to the blacks who reached their lines to fight their rebels, the same American elites. This maneuver and offer frightened the reluctant Americans into granting a like deal to blacks who fought on their side, against the British, after initially resisting, due to fear of black revolts against Americans' tyranny.
An estimated 5,000-10,000 blacks gained freedom by this means in America . An even larger number were shipped to Canada, to Sierra Leone, and the Caribbean by the British in fulfillment of its promise. But, the Americans' Africans did not receive the land allotments, pensions, nor wages, promised them, that were given to the whites, as bonuses, to induce enlisting and reward service.
This convenient tripartite legal arrangement--black slave, poor whites elevated, and destroyed indigenes--was toppled by the Civil War. Then, blacks, now Americans indeed, if yet Africans in spirit, provided the decisive, unyielding "sable arm" that freed them and millions from their thralldom and that saved the country from destruction.
Since that war was fought over the future and status of the blacks, relative to this nation's expansion across the continent and the attendant material riches that flowed, the question of what to do with them, for them, to them, or about them, again recurred, as before in the colonial era, of which Jefferson first wrote in his NOTES ON THE STATE OF VIRGINIA (Query XIV) in 1785.
For a little while, less than ten years, Congress' post-war Reconstruction, through "The Bureau of Freedmen and Abandoned Lands," afforded some relief. Although the "abandoned lands" that blacks claimed, worked, and developed, and we're promised--40 acres and a mule--were taken away from them by law and given to white, wealthy speculators. Similarly, the earnings that the Freedmen had accrued since slavery and had invested in the Freedmen's Savings Bank, also Congressionally chartered, afforded greedy Wall Street raiders a golden opportunity to pilfer their money on fraudulent land schemes--like the recent mortgage scam's phony and inflated instruments--and to steal the millions of dollars saved by over 60,000 Freedmen in that failed bank. This money was never refunded by Congress; for if it were passed, by one chamber, it would fail in the other. If it somehow passed both, it was not signed by law into law by the President. Catch -22! Desperate and earnest attempts to reclaim it ran through the early 1900s.
Meanwhile immigrants from Europe's white poor people were brought in by the millions to thwart the political, economic, cultural, demographic threat to "white power," posed by the surging blacks, whose populations kept increasing through it all!
So, having no other option, the ever-resiliently creative blacks set out to do for themselves. By establishing their own communities, schools, banks, churches, businesses, farms, and colleges, with some key material aid from a few Northern missionaries, they managed to muddle through into the 20th century through their "nadir" when lynching, theft, lies, rape, and chicanery was the rule in depriving blacks of all rights guaranteed by law for life, liberty, property, and the peaceable pursuit of happiness!
No help, the blacks now sadly recognized, would be forthcoming from the federal, the state, or local governments, despite their sacrifice, loyalty, their taxation payments to all, given each one's callous indifference or hostility to the plight of the blacks.
Meantime, racist propaganda spewed like methane from every vent and fissure of American life, proclaiming repeatedly the inherent inferiority of the blacks, and the natural right of the whites to subjugate them. This white power paradigm continues to date in myriad guises. Its intent is to discourage and dishearten the blacks and to encourage and reassure the attitudinal descendants of the "poor whites," who are now executives, teachers, government employees, police, firemen, judges, legislators, business owners, scholars, pastors, soldiers. They are now the "middle class," these attitudinal poor whites; meanwhile the true poor whites--being yet extant, are as deranged as ever: on welfare, on food stamps, on social security, as they ever were, and as hostile to blacks disproportionately, and inexplicably.
Almost remarkably, millions of the blacks have somehow overcome all the barriers and obstacles to achieve similar status with fewer resources to whites: middle class and well-above.
Now that the President is black, too, the old paradigm of white supremacy is taking a beating, especially when black billionaires, entertainers, agents, actors politicians, authors, professionals and athletes are known globally, along with their services, merchandise, music, and éclat. They are deemed to be Americans by others and deem themselves as such.
Politics is practically all that remains for "poor whites," of whatever income level, "poor white" being an attitude, a demented and deranged mentality, which feels itself divested, thrown down from its formerly exalted place in American life, whenever the nation's much-vaunted laws, privileges and immunity is afforded equally to blacks, as a fact, not idea!
They deem this to be a breach of the colonial promise made to the "poor whites," that they would remain above the blacks, always, forever, whatever anyone's merits, whatever the law says, simply, because they were white. So they look to, and vote for. the GOP, the Republican-Teaparty, the right wing-quasi-Klan "conservatives, whoever, to restore it.
Meanwhile, these reliable racists are repeatedly manipulated, aroused by demagogic politicians who view them as mere dross, to enrich their "boss," the oligarchs and plutocrats that rule! It apparently matters not to them that they are undercutting themselves, their own economic interests thereby.
Foolishly and futilely they think that by doing so, that they, "poor whites," attitudinally, are stopping us, the resurgent and reawakened blacks, from achieving fully what is our due!
Look at the diagonal of history and learn, "poor whites," that the arc of justice is finally bending our way! With that blessed assurance of our forebears, we agree with those who boldly sing, "there ain't no stopping us now! We're on the move!"
Wednesday, January 14, 2015
WHICH SPIRIT OF '76 IS BEST?
WHICH SPIRIT OF '76 WAS BEST?
The first "spirit of '76" announced the Continental Congress' "Declaration of Independence" from Great Britain, its founding partner, over issues of black slavery, mercantile trade, international banking/insurance interests in its profitable, obdurate thirteen colonies.
The second "spirit of '76" presaged the retrogressive "Hayes-Tilden Compromise of 1877." This white Congressional rapprochement resulted in the South being conceded to the Democrats, to do with their black former slaves--now "freedmen"--as they pleased, without regard to their newly-won Constitutional or statutory "rights," or the then-occupying federal troops which were withdrawn as part of the deal. Thereby, the Presidency was accorded by fiat to the Ohio Republican, Rutherford B. Hayes, to resolve the erstwhile election dispute wherein the Democrat Tilden won the popular vote, while the Republican Hayes carried the electoral vote.
The third "spirit of '76" featured the 1976 election of Jimmy Carter, former Georgia Governor, as President, the first elected President from the South since before the Civil War, and the marking of our Bicentennial Year.
For me, the best of all was the fourth "spirit of 1976," when I graduated the Howard University School of Law.
Of them all, my own mattered most to me, with all due respect to history!
Tuesday, January 13, 2015
CONFIDENCE IS KNOWING
CONFIDENCE IS KNOWING
Confidence is a major component of any activity. Whether walking, talking, swimming, or whatever. Confidence derives from knowing what you can do , based upon what you have done.
Sapping an opponent 's confidence is an important part of any battle. It alone has determined the victor beforehand. Example: I remember when Michael Spinks fought Mike Tyson. Spinks had lost before he stepped into the ring, because Tyson reminded him of a street fighter from the projects, that he could not beat. Sure enough, he was knocked out in the first 90 seconds of the first round by the wind from a Tyson punch that missed! I did not see it land, at least!
Another example: Buster Douglas knocked Tyson out, because he had been his sparring partner, and had acquired sufficient experience to know his susceptibility to the upper cut that solidly knocked Tyson out!
Confidence comes from knowing, not thinking, hoping, praying, or wishing. Knowledge is power and empowers.
"I know that my redeemer lives" is a scriptural expression of unshakeable confidence that has brought us thus far. Such knowledge is experiential, and visceral. Job 19:25 says "I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand upon the earth."
Knowledge is confidence is power!
WHAT MANNER OF 'MAN'
http://www.ask.com/wiki/Man_(word)…
Wondering why "human" is not in the KJV Bible, but that "man" is, I investigated. I was surprised to find that the word "man," itself, derives from the Hindu word "Manu" of Hindu mythology. According to which: "In some Hindu traditions, Manu is a title accorded to a progenitor of humanity. According to these traditions, the current time period is ruled by the seventh Manu called the Vaivasvata Manu, the son of Vivasvân and his wife Sanjnâ.[1]
Vaivasvata Manu, whose original name was Satyavrata, is the 7th Manu and considered the first king to rule this earth, who saved humanity from the great flood — after being warned of it by the Matsya avatar of Vishnu,[2] who had also advised him to build a giant boat. The story is mentioned in early Hindu scriptures such as the Satapatha Brahmana, and it has often been compared with the popular traditions of a Great Deluge from other cultures around the world,[3] particularly that of Noah's Ark." http://www.ask.com/wiki/Manu_(Hinduism)?qsrc=3044
This excerpt from Wikipedia really took me out! The Bible story of Noah is based upon the Hindu mythology of "Manu" which is also the source for the word "man" that comes down through various tongues to our English one, meaning any person.
"What manner of man is this," Mark 4:41, indeed; or we, indeed? A composite people, the same people, each borrowing from the other, continuously, it seems.
Man (word) - Ask.com Encyclopedia
Ask.com is the #1 question answering service that delivers the best answers from the web and real people - all in one place.
ASK.COM
Sunday, January 11, 2015
imagination is more important than knowledge
IMAGINATION
Imagination flows from memory's cosmic reservoir into infinite spiritual potentials; it then flits back, in an instant, pollinating each energizing medium through which it flows and flits. Einstein was right. "Imagination is more important than knowledge."
Imagination - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Imagination, also called the faculty of imagining, is the ability to form new images and sensations in the mind that are not perceived through senses such as sight, hearing, or other senses. Imagination helps make knowledge applicable in solving problems and is fundamental to integrating experience…
EN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG
Saturday, January 10, 2015
CONTEND FOR THE FAITH
"Contend" for the faith!
People who unduly criticize Christianity typically have no religion or belong to some cult. Just ask them for theirs, when they criticize yours; or go to their page and see their posts and thereby discern.
Most critics like to throw a rock and then hide their hand. Few of them can withstand the scrutiny that they would subject you to. This is also true for certain groups within Christianity itself. Call them out as well for clarification!
The Bible says "contend for the faith." Contend means to live a life worthy of the light of Jesus Christ in you in word and in deed, not "needless disputations" which neither advance nor advantage no one and nothing whatsoever!
ONLY A FEW WILL DO!
ONLY A FEW WILL DO!
"I only teach those who want to learn. All others may leave, right now! You are invited, requested, beseeched to leave right now. Please. Do not abuse yourself or me by staying here for show, when you really want to go. Be considerate of others and be good to yourselves. Go! Hit the door. See ya!"
The above monologue,or words of like effect, have a powerful impact. I have used them at juvenile detention centers, at high schools, at churches, in university lecture halls; everywhere.
It separates the men from the boys, the women from the girls, the wants from the don't-wants. It also lets folks know whose class it is ; and who's in charge! There simply must be order, an eagerness to learn, and "peace in the valley," for learning to take place.
This approach evokes the book of Deuteronomy. Before taking men to war, that commander eliminated the weak ones, the scared ones, the scurrilous ones, the ones with any kind of alibi whatsoever. So did Gideon . So must we. Everybody cannot, will not, and need not be saved! Only a few will do. If you would teach in a more perfect way, follow these commands and flourish!
Friday, January 9, 2015
TIME FOR AN ENLARGED CONGRESS
EARLIER TODAY, IN A STATUS, I WONDERED WHY WE HAD ONLY 435 MEMBERS OF CONGRESS, AND WHETHER WE MIGHT NOT BE BETTER SERVED AS A NATION--AND AS BLACKS--BY MORE MEMBERS, GIVEN EXPONENTIAL TERRITORIAL AND POPULATION GROWTH, ALONG WITH PROFOUND DEMOGRAPHIC CHANGES RELATIVE TO VOTER ELIGIBILITY.
IT TURNS OUT THAT CERTAIN ASPECTS OF THIS QUERY WERE DEBATED PRIOR TO 1791, WHEN THE BILL OF RIGHTS WAS ADOPTED, AND WAS MADE SUBJECT TO LAW AS LATE AS 1929, WHEN 435 WAS FIXED UPON, VIZ:
"In response to Anti-Federalist objections, Congress sent twelve amendments to the states for ratification, the first of which changed the method of calculating the number of Representatives. Instead of there being no more than one Representative for 30,000 people, the amendment would have required at least one Representative for 30,000, or later, 40,000 and 50,000 as the population grew. But the amendment failed to achieve ratification, the only one of the original twelve never to have been approved by the states. The Federalist vision of the Union prevailed.
"True to Madison's prediction, Congress dutifully increased the number of Representatives as the population grew. By 1833, Justice Joseph Story would write in his Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States that the dire predictions of the Anti-Federalists "have all vanished into air, into thin air." After the Civil War, Southern representation increased with the ending of slavery and the three-fifths rule. Congress, however, failed to enforce Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment, written to compel the Southern states to enfranchise blacks or lose representation. Finally, in 1929, after being unable to make a reapportionment after the census of 1920, Congress decided to cap the number of Representatives at 435.
Since 1790, Congress has applied five different methods of apportioning Representatives among the states. The present "Hill Method," with its complex formula determining when a state may gain or lose a seat, has been in use since 1940. It has been twice challenged before the Supreme Court. In Franklin v. Massachusetts (1992), the Court upheld the inclusion of federal military and civil personnel and their dependents in the apportioned populations. In United States Department of Commerce v. Montana (1992), the Court unanimously approved the "Hill Method" in the face of a challenge by Montana, which lost one seat in favor of Washington after the 1990 census."
http://www.heritage.org/constitution/#!/articles/1/essays/8/allocation-of-representatives
EXPANDING CONGRESS AND THE SUPREME COURT?
Would it be improvident to propose an expansion of Congress to dilute the influence of money on policy, while expanding the base of representation to include more underserved groups?
The population has increased 100 fold since 1789, the year the Constitution was ratified, why has Congress not increased proportionately? Or the Supreme Court?
Thursday, January 8, 2015
FREE-WILL AND DETERMINISM RECONCILED
Whether man is governed by free will or determinism, is an ancient, long-troubling question, deemed to be circuitous and casuistic. Actually, it is not an "either-or" question. Mankind is both. I draw this inference from a study of music's affects of Congo Pygmies and Montreal musicians (below) which concluded:
"People have been trying to figure out for quite a while whether the way that we react to music is based on the culture that we come from or on some universal features of the music itself," says Stephen McAdams, from McGill's Schulich School of Music. "Now we know that it is actually a bit of both."
Thus, by analogy therefore, mankind is both free-will and determinism in one.
DISCERNING THE TIMES
"and in the morning, 'Today it will be stormy, for the sky is red and overcast.' You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times."
Matt. 16:3
That spiritual discernment which Jesus alludes to in this passage of scripture, Matthew 16:3, is that extrasensory perception innate in mankind, beyond the five known senses. He had it, sharpened it and, in love, sought vainly to remind mankind that it also had this same divine gift of God. Few people discerned his meaning, or its presence, then or now, sadly! http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/discern
Wednesday, January 7, 2015
VENEZUELAN FISHERMAN
Image from http://www.poetryfoundation.org/…/…/james-weldon-johnson.jpg.
"Now fishing, it may be said, is the laziest of all the sports; here was a fisherman without a rod or line or hook, who was puffing languidly on his cigarette while the fish jumped into his boat. His only effort in the meantime was to observe his catch occasionally to see if it was sufficient....
"At any rate, this is the inside of the story: The fisherman, just before the tide turned to run out, paddled his boat to the inlet and anchored it across the mouth, which was hardly wider than the length of his craft; then a yard or so on the upstream side of his boat, he stretched a seine entirely across the inlet with about a foot of the net above the water. He then sat in his boat and smoked while he waited. At the turn of the tide, the fish that had been chasing their prey up the bay and into the inlet, started back to the sea, and found their passage obstructed by the seine; at least a fair number of them simply backed up and took a flying leap over the barrier; some fell short of the boat and others shot over it, but enough fell in to reward the fisherman for his ingenuity and patience. We watched until the satisfied fisherman removed his seine, pulled his anchors, and paddled away; and we agreed that laziness, not necessity, is the mother of invention."
P.235, ALONG THIS WAY, by James Weldon Johnson (1933)
WISDOM LASTS A LIFETIME
Image from http://image.shutterstock.com/…/stock-photo-black-waiter-sh….
WISDOM LASTS A LIFETIME
"Slow your roll!" was an expression that Joe Brown, a conk-wearing, punctilious waiter, in Clayton, Missouri, in the mid-1960s, used to admonish us busboys, whenever we were working too hastily, as evinced by spilling water, dropping silverware or like indiscretions. It means "be careful," in plain English. But, its éclat perfectly fit the smooth Joe Brown.
Another waiter at the same restaurant named Ben, but who lacked a 'conk', shared another hip expression with Joe Brown. It was "Bus! Bus! Tighten your game!" That one meant "handle your business or tend to your affairs, right now!" As we, young busboys, derived the bulk of our wages from these waiters, who derived their tips from happy, satisfied customers, we were duty bound to make sure that: tables were properly set; butter pads were down; water glasses were filled; stains covered; dirty dishes removed, crumbs whisked away, and that all inquiries or requests were resolved.
"Patient ingenuity" was an expression used by the observant James Weldon Johnson to describe a fisherman whose clever contrivance of a seine, inlet boat placement and knowledge of tides, was used to force fish to jump into his boat on their return to the sea in Venezuela, in his 1933 autobiography ALONG THIS WAY.
That same virtue, patient ingenuity, of writer, Johnson, subsumed perfectly our waiters', Joe and Bens's, cleverly idiomatic gems: "slow your roll" and "tighten your game." We understood!
Wisdom lasts a lifetime .
Monday, January 5, 2015
ST. VINCENT
http://www.ask.com/wiki/Saint_Vincent_and_the_Grenadines?o=2800&qsrc=999&ad=doubleDown&an=apn&ap=ask.com
Black Caribs (admixture of Arawak and escaped or shipwrecked African slaves) were removed by the British from St. Vincent in the Grenadines (west of Barbados) to Rattan an island off Honduras in 1790, to prevent further uprisings, harmful to British sugar plantations. The Black Caribs then evolved into or were absorbed by the Garifuna, a polyglot of races, mainly African and Indian, now occupying transnational seacoasts on the Caribbean side of Central America, including cities within the United States. http://www.ask.com/wiki/Garifuna_people?o=2800&qsrc=999&ad=doubleDown&an=apn&ap=ask.com
BROODING SPAGHETTI TRANSFORMED
BROODING SPAGHETTI TRANSFORMED
As good of a cook as Mama was, bless her sweet soul, she could not touch her mother! One memorable occasion, back 'in 64 or '65, Mama cooked some spaghetti that was less than stellar. In fact, it was awful. We left it in its plastic-covered container brooding. So happened that 'Mother'--Mama's mother--came up to visit us from Mississippi around that time.
Opening the refrigerator, Mother espied that brooding spaghetti, and took it out. About this time, somebody--maybe me--whispered something about its character and taste to her. She sniffed, tasted. Smiled. And said "It just needs a little fixin', that's all. Go sit down, In few minutes, it'll be ready."
As though by magic, Mother not only transformed Mama's brooding spaghetti into a happy camper, but she also transformed her brood of hungry, grateful grandchildren into lip-smacking, plate-licking spaghetti-lovers; who kept begging for more!
Even Mama and Daddy joined in this festive rejuvenation of formerly tasteless spaghetti. We left that plastic-covered bowl barren!
Thank you Mother! If you have a grandma who could 'burn' and should you remember any childhood anecdotes. Please feel free to share them.
NEW YORK POLICE QUESTIONS
NEW YORK POLICE QUESTIONS
One wonders if there is a secret, white-supremacist cabal buried in the depths of the New York police department, historically; something akin to a "Skulls and Bones," -type fraternity, given the many infamous cases of prisoner abuse, murders of innocents, and trumped-up charges, of blacks, all coming from there?
This is buttressed by the claim that black police are afraid of their fellow white police officers, which is strange. Also strange was the sudden resignation of the highest ranking black in that department in 2014, rather than to assume its top post.
Turning their backs on authority, and as surely on the law, suggests an outlaw, renegade element's presence, undue influence, somewhere, that is beholden to nothing and to no one but to itself ! "Gangs of New York?"
Justice's FBI had better investigate !
NYPD - Official New York City Police Department Web Site
TESTIMONY OF DEPUTY COMMISSIONER OF INTELLIGENCE AND COUNTERTERRORISM JOHN J. MILLER NEW YORK CITY POLICE DEPARTMENT BEFORE THE NEW YORK CITY COUNCIL COMMITTEES ON PUBLIC SAFETY AND FIRE AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE SERVICES NOVEMBER 12, 2014 Click here for the PDF file
NYC.GOV
FORTUNATELY FOR US...
Fortunately for us, our ancestors, enslaved or not, chose not to abort us! Though many Africans did commit mass-suicide, rather than face or endure slavery, and many do and did choose abortion over parturition, far more chose life over death. These are they who loved us, whatever the circumstances, and who trusted in God.
Sunday, January 4, 2015
SNOWFLAKES ADRIFT IN SPACE
Image from http://images.clipartpanda.com/snowflake-clipart-transparen….
SNOWFLAKES ADRIFT IN SPACE
The soul and the intellect empower, activate human behavior, along with the central nervous system and the musculoskeletal system; these four, perhaps more, like the gustatory, sensory systems, induce activity in us, by us, for us, as our intercessors.
They cooperate interdependently, and integrally, with each other, in apparent response to always-dynamic genetic, and environmental cues, commands, without our conscious knowledge.
So often, in fact, do they coordinate our behavior, that we seem to be on autopilot; not so much determining as following, as executing, impulses that we falsely and presumptively attribute solely to our wills, to our selves alone.
What if we were just ephemeral dust particles flashing briefly on the nether region or edge of an obscure Super-Galaxy, in a cold, infinitesimal Galaxy named the Milky Way, on a planet of an even more remote solar system.
What if, notwithstanding such stated remoteness and such ephemeral essences, we were still subject in all systems to an order, to a paradigm, that prescribes and preordains all ways and the means, all what's and wherefore's, greater and lesser, of all that is, all that was, or ever shall be?
Would we still, then, be responsible for ourselves, for our behaviors, for our deeds? Would not we be fellow snowflakes adrift in cosmic space?
Saturday, January 3, 2015
INSATIABILITY
INSATIABILITY
When insatiable people meet, there is bound to be conflict between them, however much there may be to eat.
That is the nature of being insatiable, never sated, never satisfied nor filled.
As such, "insatiability" is a disease, a sickness, a tapeworm, and an unruly compulsive-disorder, that attacks like a virus those, & that, it consumes as its hosts, before, like boll-weevils, moving on to new, raw cotton bolls.
In America, material possessions and massive financial wherewithal, is its major viral obsession, wherein there is never enough to "eat", despite plenty's presence via historical, cultural, legal: "white" privilege laws, customs, taxes: state, federal, local.
But, for the presence of African Americans' amazing creative, redemptive, productive, and reproductive capacities, that has created so much of America's wealth, for free, or at huge discounts from their actual fair market value, American money mavens would have long since attacked and consumed each other, as they almost did in the Civil War, which Africans repulsed!
Friday, January 2, 2015
DAVID WALKER WAS A MASTER MASON
"Members of African Lodge were interested in the advancement of black people and they found the Lodge was a service of inspiration and mutual assistance. David Walker, a black abolitionist, was one of these members who paid dues in March 1824. He was born of free parents in Wilmington, North Carolina, and came to Boston where he opened a second hand clothing store. In 1829, his 'Appeal in Four Articles together with a Preamble to the Colored Citizens of the World but in particular and expressly to those of the U.S.A.,' was published in three editions within three years. It was a call to blacks to rise against enslavement and oppression. Walker and his associates sent this appeal into many areas of the nation. When it arrived in the South, it caused great consternation and alarm among slaveholders and their sympathizers. State legislatures, like the one in Georgia, forbade its circulation because of its 'evil tendency among our domestics'. Walker disappeared in 1830 and was unheard of thereafter. However, he left his influence on the antislavery movement , having been a black active abolitionist and a Prince Hall Mason, who was raised to the Master's degree on August 14, 1826, according to the 'Minutes' of African Lodge of Boston of this date, 'he requested and begged for it.'"
P.131-132, PRINCE HALL LIFE AND LEGACY by Charles H. Wesley (1983)
STUDY IS A FORM OF WORSHIP
STUDY IS A FORM OF WORSHIP
(A POEM)
Friday, January 02, 2015
By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman
Study is a form of worship.
Study is a form of praise.
Study is devoted tribute.
Study decodes the maze.
Study expresses gratitude
To God for all that is made.
Study improves the self
From common to higher grade!
Study quickens the inquiring spirit.
Study calls forth from the deep.
Study anoints with pleasure
All who take the leap!
Study sharpens the student
Exacting its daily tolls.
Such is the price for access
Into its enriching folds!
“Study to show thyself approved unto God”
2 Timothy 2:15 commands
To all whom in supplication
Seek those cosmic lands.
#30
TRICKSTERS
TRICKSTERS ARE EVERYWHERE AND IN EVERYONE, EVEN YOU!
Trickery or deceit, though not necessarily a virtue, is as natural, effective and well-proven device to humans, plants, beasts, or fish, as virtue itself. It is also as common. Babies do it. Bible characters like David, Gideon, and Jacob (whose name means 'trickster') have done it, and had it done to them. Queen Elizabeth is reputed to have said that lying was a vital part of diplomacy. The indigenes of America said about Europeans' treaties and promises: that white men speak with forked tongue. Hannibal of Carthage deceived Rome by crossing the Alps with elephants, which the Iberians thought was impossible, after faking a landing by sea. African American literature's "Brer' Rabbit" stories are full of triumphant tricks and tricksters.
Most famously, though, deceit or trickery is represented by the Trojan Horse. The Greeks rescued victory from the jaws of defeat, by reason of this wooden horse ruse filled with soldiers. The Trojans thought that horse to be a tribute to their prowess and victory, as they saw the Greek ships preparing to sail away in apparent defeat. So, the Trojans opened their previously impregnable gates to receive the Greek gift'. They later slipped out of their sinecure and routed the Trojans who were weakened with wine from the riotous feasting of a deceitful victory that ended in Troy's defeat.
In short everyone and everything has a little deceitfulness in it and in them.
Thursday, January 1, 2015
THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN HISTORY
"Sir John Hawkins made three trips to America from the West Coast of Africa between 1563 and 1567, taking with him several hundred of the natives whom he sold as slaves. Queen Elizabeth became a partner in this nefarious trade. So elated was she at its profits that she knighted him, and he most happily selected for his crest a Negro head and bust with arms tightly pinioned. It was a lucrative business and though it at first shocked the sensibilities of Christian nations and rulers, they soon reconciled themselves not only to the traffic , but introduced the servitude as part of the economic system of their dependencies in America. That it became a fixture after its introduction in these colonies was due to the prerogative of the Home Government rather than to the importunities of the colonists, especially because it was a source of revenue for the Crown."
P.2-3, THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN HISTORY by John Wesley Cromwell (1914)
JANUARY 1, 1863 : THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured_documents/emancipation_proclamation/
JANUARY 1, 1863, this Executive Order, first issued by President Abraham Lincoln in September 1862, became law. It enabled the enlistment of black troops in the Union Army, out of "military necessity." More famously, it "freed" the slaves in rebellious Southern states, over which he had no authority, while leaving enslaved those in border states, over which he had authority: Missouri and Kentucky, most prominently. Even so, even this much was widely heralded by the blacks, who had been running away by the tens of thousands to attach themselves to Union armies, whenever they drew near their situs, being deemed "contraband of war," since May 1861. These new troops' bravery, daring, and energy in battle won the war for the Union, and preserved the United States of America as one nation.